If you have ever heard the phrase, “It wasn’t me, it was the one-armed man!” then know that it is from The Fugitive (1993).  Actually, to be more precise, it was from The Fugitive (1963-1967).  Confused yet?  If you are, then I recommend learning more about American Popular Culture, which I used to teach a course on back in the day.  Naturally, that gives me a knowledge advantage, although the line is used by Jim Carey in The Mask (1994).  You could argue that he was referencing the movie that came out the previous year, but keep in mind that it takes a while to shoot and release any production.  It is just as likely that he was giving a nod to the show, whose final episode was the most watched broadcast up that point.  Because this is a film review blog, I will be discussing the 1993 iteration.  Having never seen its forerunner, I have no point of comparison.  All the same, this Catholic was largely satisfied by what he saw.

What The Fugitive, Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford), sees in the opening scene are the police coming to his apartment.  He has been found covered in the blood of his dead wife, Helen Kimble (Sela Ward).  As he is being taken away by the police for questioning, he is replaying the events of the night.  Dr. Kimble had been at a benefit dinner with Helen and is on the way home when he gets a call from his friend and fellow doctor, Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbé), to come to the hospital for an emergency surgery.  This is given in bits and pieces throughout, but Helen had been arranging for a romantic night when someone had come in and attacked her, leading to her death.  Because there are no signs of a forced entry, and given the size of her life insurance policy, they decide to book Dr. Kimble.  Despite his protestations that it had been the individual mentioned in the previous paragraph (Andreas Katsulas), he is tried and convicted of Helen’s murder.  On his way to prison, his fellow inmate passengers have devised a scheme to escape.  One fakes a seizure, and when a guard comes back to inquire into the matter, the corrections officer is stabbed with a shiv.  Chaos erupts on the vehicle, with it eventually careening off the road and rolling down the hill.  It lands on train tracks with a locomotive bearing down.  Dr. Kimble is the only who tries to help the wounded officer, doing so before the train hits the bus and derails.  Shortly thereafter, Deputy United States Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) arrives on the scene with his team.  At first, his presence is considered superfluous since the one surviving guard is claiming that everyone else died in the wreck.  It does not take long before the unlocked chains are found and Marshal Gerard takes over the investigation.  Meanwhile, Dr. Kimble is making good on his opportunity to flee.  Because he has sustained an injury, he finds his way to a hospital.  After stitching himself, he is recognized by a local cop who has come to put his wanted poster at the facility.  He gets away by commandeering an ambulance, and now the chase has begun.  It nearly concludes at a dam, with Marshal Gerard cornering Dr. Kimble at the end of a tunnel that empties high above the spillway.  After protesting his innocence, Dr. Kimble jumps into the water below.  Once more, everyone believes he has not survived, but eventually he washes onto a bank and picks his way back to Chicago.  Once there, he finds Dr. Nichols and asks for money, nothing more.  Dr. Kimble then tries to phone his lawyer, but finds that to be of no avail.  The call is also recorded, which means Marshal Gerard is now certain that Dr. Kimble is still alive.  This leads to questioning Dr. Kimble’s associates, and all of them, including Dr. Nichols, assert that the title character could not have committed such a crime.  Speaking of Dr. Kimble, his mission now becomes trying to find Helen’s attacker.  He is able to get an apartment and create a fake identity for himself so he can begin digging into the records at Cook County Hospital of anyone with a prosthetic limb.  Doing so leads him to the county prison.  However, just as he is about to interview a potential suspect, Marshal Gerard receives a tip with his landlord is arrested for child pornography.  Here is a Catholic hooray for that bit of justice, but it leads the authorities to again pick up Dr. Kimble’s trail.  They almost catch him at the jail, but he narrowly gets away into the St. Patrick’s Day parade crowd.  His next target is a man named Sykes, who is the aforementioned one-armed man.  However, it goes deeper.  Breaking into Sykes’ home, Dr. Kimble learns that the former cop is on the payroll of a pharmaceutical company trying to push a drug that he had denounced as hazardous.  He leaves this evidence in the home, and sneaks away to go to the hospital and to verify his findings about the medicine.  In doing so, he realizes that Dr. Nichols had been the one tampering with the samples.  This connects because the erstwhile colleague is set to give a presentation to investors about the liver treatment at a nearby hotel.  At the same time, Dr. Nichols has sent Sykes to deal with Dr. Kimble, and eventually finds the escapee on the Elevated “L” train.  There is a brief struggle that leads to the death of another police officer, which is instantly blamed on Dr. Kimble despite him leaving the alive Sykes handcuffed to a rail at the scene.  From there, Dr. Kimble goes to the hotel to get Dr. Nichols.  By this point, Marshal Gerard has figured out that Dr. Nichols is guilty, and heads to the same place.  The long and short of all the resulting action is that Dr. Nichols is arrested along with his accomplice, and Dr. Kimble is freed.

After everything that Dr. Kimble goes through as The Fugitive, it is satisfying to see that he goes free.  As a Catholic, I follow the Church’s teachings on justice, social or otherwise, and they are not always in line with what society defines as the law.  That is true for Christianity in general, which is something we need to take into consideration more when we think about wanting things such as the Ten Commandments in court rooms.  Either way, Dr. Kimble’s actions bear closer scrutiny.  When it comes to the eyes of God, none of us are completely innocent because we are all sinners.  He may not have murdered his wife, but I promise that he made some kind of theological transgression.  What Faith does is allows us to not be defined by those sins, which I think is a fair thing to say about Dr. Kimble.  Evidence for this can be found in a couple moments.  The first comes when he risks his life to save the wounded guard on the bus.  Despite everyone else abandoning him and the imminent collision with a train, he makes sure the afflicted gets to safety.  One might argue that this is part of his Hippocratic oath as a doctor to do no harm.  If so, then maybe the oath is Christian in nature?  The other moment comes when he and Marshal Gerard are in the tunnels.  The deputy has dropped his gun and it is recovered by the doctor.  Dr. Kimble has every opportunity to shoot his adversary and keep running, but he relents.  He could even claim self-defense, though judges tend to look poorly on those running from the law.  What he does is show mercy.  Christians are called to imitate Christ at all times, and showing mercy is a big component of what He asked of us.  Overall, Dr. Kimble demonstrates restraint whenever possible, which makes the conclusion satisfying on many levels.

If you have not already seen The Fugitive, I think you will find it a satisfying watch as well.  Some praise should also be given to Marshal Gerard, who keeps an open mind to the possibility of Dr. Kimble’s innocence.  It all adds up to a classic movie worth viewing